


Being Normal

by sparrow2000



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 04:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4290408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrow2000/pseuds/sparrow2000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles always thought his life was normal. It’s not easy realising he was wrong</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Normal

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Joss and Mutant Enemy et al, own everything. I own nothing.  
> Comments and feedback are cuddled and called George  
> Beta extraordinaire: thismaz  
> Written for 2015 summer_of_giles  
> Warnings: Unnamed character death off camera

**Being Normal**

It felt like it should be raining.

If he closed his eyes, he could picture the scene. The pavement slick with rain, neon signs reflected in puddles and pools of water running in the guttering at the side of the road. A siren wailing, loud at first, then getting fainter as an ambulance thudded over the railway crossing at the end of the street, hurtling towards another domestic...accident...illness...death...human trauma.

Human, Giles thought. How different were their lives that he had to differentiate between the us and the them? The ordinary and the arcane. The normal and the not. He recognised that the thought was absurd. His life had never been normal, but for years he had thought that it was others who were strange. The old man buying his cigarettes at the corner shop was wrong. The girl pushing her pram and the small boy playing with his dog in the park at the end of the street, they were alien to him – small, common place, different. That was the way things looked when you lived in the dark.

But it wasn’t raining. And it wasn’t dark.

The sun shone, the streets were bleached white in the shimmering heat and cicadas chirped like a manic orchestra in the brush on the other side of the road. Giles stood on the cracked pavement staring down at the dead girl lying in the shadows at the mouth of a narrow, alley, because there was always an alley in his world, and he knew that all his perceptions were wrong. The old man, the girl with the pram, the boy with the dog, they were the normal ones and he was the alien. What normal person sends a teenage girl to fight the monsters under the bed? What normal person watches her die then sends another out to take her place? What normal person stands in the blazing California sun and waits for a clean-up crew to pick up another body to take back to a crematorium the rest of the world doesn’t know exists?

He heard footsteps behind him but didn’t turn around. “It should be raining,” he said.

The footsteps stopped. “So that you can weep, unseen?”

“Perhaps,” he replied. “I’m waiting for the Collector. I can’t leave her here. People will see.”

“Humans only see what they wish to see. She would not know if you left. But your vigil is an honourable one. I will stay and bear witness to her fall. Collection will happen when it is time.”

The footsteps started again and in the space of a few brief heartbeats, Illyria stood an arms-length away in the lee of the crumbling wall of an old cafe that hadn’t been open in years. She looked down at the fallen Slayer, studying the body as a biology student would study a bug under a microscope. “I did not know this one,” she said. “Wesley told me that Slayers carry the spirit of the first Slayer with them. If that is true, I do not understand why, now there are many, the spirit cannot be seen. I do not understand why they still appear different, one from the other?”

Giles scrubbed the side of his face, absently noting that he needed to shave. “They all carry the spirit in their own way,” he said. “But they were girls before they were Slayers. Individuals before they were collective.” Normal before they were Chosen, he thought, but the idea was too difficult to voice aloud.

“Yet they all die,” she replied.

Giles shivered, despite the heat. The sweat ran down the back of his shirt. It was clammy against his skin. “And yet they all die,” he agreed.

“As will you.” The sun reflected in the window of the cafe, and her hair shone, blue becoming almost iridescent in the harshness of the high summer light.

“As will I,” he acknowledged.

“But not yet. There will be many others before it is your turn. That is your destiny.”

“Our penance,” he whispered.

“Your penance,” she corrected. “I have no need for absolution.”

“Don’t you?”

“Wesley would say not. Who would dare offer absolution to a God?”

Giles nodded slightly. “I bow to Wesley’s judgement.”

The sound of an engine made him start and he turned to watch a plain white panelled van slow and stop at the side of the road. The door opened and Xander slid out of the driver’s seat, his face solemn. He nodded to Illyria, who didn’t acknowledge his presence, before turning to Giles. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“It was just supposed to be a recce,” Giles replied. “So she could get the lie of the land. We’re so used to fighting at night that sometimes we forget not all demons live in the darkness.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I heard her scream, but I was too far away. I couldn’t get to her in time.”

“But you got it.” Xander said.

Giles was surprised by his certainty, but he nodded. “I got it.”

“Good.” Xander took a step towards the fallen Slayer, but Illyria beat him too it, lifting the body effortlessly, as if the girl was just a child who was sleeping. Her hair hung over Illyria’s arm, half caught by a purple ribbon.

Giles watched as Illyria carried the Slayer to the van, where Xander stood waiting with the side door open. As she placed the body on the small cot bolted to the floor, the ribbon fluttered to the ground and lay like a memory on the hot concrete.

Xander drew a blanket up, covering her from view. He slid the door shut. Bowing his head again slightly to Illyria, he looked over at Giles. “I’ll see you back at the house,” he said. Then he eased back into the driver’s seat, turned on the engine and was gone as quickly as he’d come.

Stooping, Giles picked up the ribbon. He rose slowly, bones creaking. The silk was soft and fluid between his fingers and when he turned, Illyria was watching him. He wondered about Fred, who he had never met. Whether she had ever worn a ribbon in her hair and whether a lover had ever pulled it free? He wondered if Illyria would consider it foolish if he offered the ribbon to her?

She tilted her head and for an instant a there was a hint of softness in her stance. Then she straightened and it disappeared so quickly, Giles couldn’t be certain it had even existed. “I will follow the Collector and leave you to your penance,” she said. She turned on her heel, strode into the shadows of the alley and was gone.

Somewhere in the distance, there was a faint rumble that sounded almost like thunder. A heavy truck bowled into view at the end of the street, thudding across the railway crossing and out of view, on its way to the nearby interstate.

The street was empty. The cicadas chirped like a buzz saw at the back of his brain. Giles sank down onto the curb, the silk ribbon in his hand and waited for the rain that wouldn’t come.


End file.
